Johnnie Robinson – The Birmingham News Article, “For Some, There Was Violent Death”

Description

December 31, 1963 article from The Birmingham News reviewing several violent deaths associated with racial conflict and civil-rights unrest in Alabama during 1963. The article discusses the bombing of Sixteenth Street Baptist Church and the deaths of Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, and Cynthia Wesley, as well as the killings of William Moore, John Coley, Virgil Ware, and Johnnie Robinson.

The article identifies Robinson as a 16-year-old who was killed by police later on September 15, 1963, the same day as the church bombing, and places his death within the wider context of racial violence in Birmingham that year. The clipping therefore provides contemporaneous retrospective context rather than a detailed investigative account of Robinson’s shooting.